Among the Electronics designs, designs done for Military, Medical, Space applications have stringent requirements. Unlike commercial designs, these designs have to sustain challenging environments. While correctness of the design is one aspect of these challenging environments, sustaining that performance over longer periods is the most challenging. Let us list some critical factors/important points which are challenging in such designs:
- The devices used in such environments have extended temperature ratings. The temperatures vary from -55degC to +125degC.
- The components used for space applications must be able to sustain that environments and especially any external radiation should have effect on flash memory of the devices
- Vibration is one challenging requirement for Military Electronics, following MIL-STD standards and getting qualified is very challenging for designs
- All the designs for Military, Medical, Aerospace, Space applications must go through DMFEA process and MTBF calculations to get to know the robustness of the circuit
- There are specific defined firmware related tests done for these designs, for example, memory leak kind of tests which tests the entire memory range of electronics used with small scripts is essential
- Considering the operating temperatures, Thermal is the most challenging aspect and it is must to perform thermal analysis with electronics + mechanical
- Security is the most important factor in these applications. Any security breach could lead to loss of huge amounts, lives. This adds additional challenges to the firmware development
- For military applications, the software development cycle has to follow MIL-STD-498
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